Rudeness

 

I have been toying with the idea that a moral agent, a practitioner of my brand of egoist-individual ethics, should be and would be a very polite, well-mannered, soft-spoken warrior, armed and able to fight if necessary, and only if critically required.

 

I believe that love of God and the love of others grows out of self-love and self-care: one is to have high self-esteem that is merited on being smart, wise, a powerful thinker, polite, courteous, and kind to the self, God and the good deities and to other people. One does not demonstrate and display good manners consistently in public unless one has high self-esteem, and one does not have high self-esteem unless one communicates and interacts with others in modes of courtesy and consideration.

 

I was reading Eric Hoffer in a couple of places in his writing where he comments on the pervasive, ubiquitous, customary rudeness experienced by anyone in a Communist nation or among fanatical collectivists.

 

My speculation about his assumption is that here, again he anticipated Mavellonialism 60 years earlier: because selfless, self-hating, low self-esteeming myrmidons in a mob or in service to a cult or mass movement or holy cause are so nasty to themselves, that is how they also treat the good deities and other people. Rudeness is a way of life for rabid groupists, even more temperate groupists.

 

It is the Hofferian Golden Rule in reverse: if we tear ourselves up first, then we export that malice and cruelty to all others, including God, when we interact with beings others than ourselves.